Chapter 10 – Becoming a Pirate

Leaving from Jingming district’s east gate and crossing the road, following the pedestrian walkway heading south by 50 meters, then turning right at Willow Lane and at the end of the street was an eatery managed by Master Chen.

Master Chen originated from Huaiyang. He wasn’t a MasterChef or anything, but he was still able to cook up good quality Huaiyang cuisine. After retiring a few years back, in order to take care of his children and grandchildren, he and his wife came to the capital to settle down.

Living in the capital was difficult due to the highly priced daily expenses. That’s why Master Chen rented an old shop at Willow Lane and opened an eatery by relying on his skills and good disposition to solicit business and to earn some living expenses.

A small eatery deeply hidden down the old street, with 5 to 6 wooden tables and dozens of chairs. The eatery was already filled with customers when Lu Chen and Li Feiyu arrived. They weren’t able to find any empty chairs at all — apparently, the business was very good!

Fortunately, Li Feiyu was a frequent customer and after acting cute towards Master Chen’s wife by repeatedly calling her “Auntie~ Auntie~” with a sweetened voice along with some other honeyed words, he had finally managed to score them some last minute seats that they placed outside the eatery.

It consisted of a student’s desk and two plastic stools, nothing too fancy, though enough to amply satisfy Li Feiyu and Lu Chen.

Master Chen’s eatery was a fine example of being cheap but “in”, as customers would even scramble earlier to get some seats. Were it not for Li Feiyu’s honeyed mouth, how would they even be able to have gotten extra seats!

After clearing half of the table and 3 bottles of beer, the now fully sated Li Feiyu started using his chatterbox innate skill.

Li Feiyu had been in the online broadcasting for over a month now. He had even specially purchased a higher quality microphone and an HD camera, hoping to show off his skills and so on, while earning some additional spending money.

Initially, he broadcasted on Whale TV, and chose the route of a gamer. The most popular online games featured on FishTV were — CKG, Heroic and StarLord. However, his skills were terrible and having played for half a month, his viewers were basically non-existent. He even made a loss once he had to pay his electricity bill.

half a month ago but chose to forego the gaming route and instead filmed himself making jokes and puns while singing and making funny faces. Surprisingly he managed to gain some popularity and earned a total of 0.3T StarCredits. 2

.

0.3T was equivalent to 30000 StarCredits which was worth around 300$. However, according to the StarryLive’s terms, users like Li Feiyu who weren’t contracted by them were only able to receive 50% of the money.

After working hard for two weeks to recoup his losses, he felt like he might as well just go out and move bricks all day to earn a living!

Mentioning his heart-wrenching broadcasting career experience, Lu Chen who also knew about his Brother’s Fei tough childhood couldn’t help but feel sympathetic.

“Xiao Lu, did you know?”

Downing a can of beer, he said, “Our company’s Xiao Mei, earned about 20~30 thousand on StarryLive last month. Compared to the salary at 4S, she earned 5-6 times more! She won’t even be coming to work next month onwards!”

Lu Chen was actually familiar with Xiao Mei, the receptionist of the 4S shop Li Feiyu was working at. She had pretty wide eyes, a sharp nose, a small face, a slender figure, long slim legs, and most importantly she was only 20 and single! She was considered the company’s beauty and had a lot of suitors and secret admirers!

The reason why Lu Chen knew that much about her wasn’t because he had personally met her, but thanks to Li Feiyu’s incessant mentioning of her.

That’s right, the bloke in front of him was undisputedly one of the members of Xiao Mei’s secret admirers’ group!

“Is she very talented?” Lu Chen curiously asked.

Li Feiyu explained, “She doesn’t know how to sing nor dance. The things she usually broadcast would be, doing makeup, eating, acting cute and chatting with her fans…”

Lu Chen was stumped — you can even do it that way?

“It really works!”

Li Feiyu excitedly said, “Not only acting cute and chatting, there are people who even broadcast themselves sleeping, watching TV, cooking, and writing novels on StarryLive! Anything you can think of, it’s do-able there!”

“Xiao Lu, with your talent and abilities, you will definitely have a future on StarryLive!”

Turning solemn, he said: “Right now on StarryLive the monthly income of the seven most popular broadcasters are in the tens of thousands, and rumor has it that the signing on fees of the most popular broadcaster Yan Manni has reached a shocking amount of 5 million yuan and that she also nailed several advertisement gigs. Her daily viewers on StarryLive amount up to 2 million. Can you imagine how much credits she receives?”

Lu Chen nodded, seemingly agreeing with what Li Feiyu had said. With Lu Chen just casually loaning the account, he had received quite a number of StarCredits from the viewers.

Just the thought of having 2 million plus Starry Fans, it certainly was scary!

Li Feiyu bitterly laughed, “It’s impossible for me to become that popular. However, it’s different for you. Not only do you sing well, you’re handsome face and you can even compose your own songs! You definitely have the potential to be popular on StarryLive!”

“Just based on the three songs you sang earlier, the number of credits you received amounted up to 2.8T, if you convert it to cash you can immediately get about $1400. Don’t you think it’s more enticing compared to you working at KFC or doing a part-time job at the bar?”

To be honest, Lu Chen was tempted!

His family was riddled with debts, and even if one factored the personal efforts of his family, small part-time jobs wouldn’t be enough to help him pay all of it off.

His newfound memories were his treasure mine, however converting it to something concrete wasn’t a simple thing to do. Take for example the stringent contract that was offered to him by Su Qingmei, one must know that for an insignificant nobody like him, he needed more than talent alone to gain popularity!

However, showcasing himself on a platform like StarryLive was without a doubt the most efficient money-making solution!

Li Feiyu continued, “Xiao Lu, I don’t intend to play around anymore, I’ll just gift you my StarryLive account! You can just change the personal information, and take my broadcasting equipment since I have no use for it anymore.”

Lu Chen was startled, he hurriedly declined, “How could I just take all these…. ”

“And why can’t you?”

Li Feiyu stared at him and said, “This is called efficient recycling! I won’t make a loss either way since the existing credits on the account belong to me, and I wouldn’t be able to get much from reselling my equipment anyways!”

Although Li Feiyu said that, Lu Chen knew the equipment was worth at least a few thousand dollars, even if it was second-hand goods.

“Brother Li…”

“If you consider me your brother then stop declining!”

Li Feiyu waved his hands and spoke in a tone that left no room for discussion, “Then it’s decided, we’ll do it this way! If you really want to repay me, just let me become your errand-guy or assistant in the future when you become a popular celebrity!”

“Pah! How can I be drunk with just two bottles? If you were to add a zero behind then I might be drunk. Alright enough the nonsense, let’s go back immediately and change the account information. Bill, please!”

After footing the bill, he then dragged Lu Chen to the rented room that he was staying in.

At home, Li Feiyu immediately switched on his computer and logged into his account.

He cashed out all 3T worth of credits in his account and started changing the account information.

StarryLive broadcasting platform allows the user to make amendments such as the broadcasting name, password, phone number and payment information etc. Thus, him helping to change the account to Lu Chen’s was quite convenient.

However, users rarely just up and changed their broadcasting name as it would affect their popularity, not to mention they would have to send messages to inform their Starry Fans which was quite troublesome.

Although it was Lu Chen’s first time using this broadcasting platform, he still managed to keep the followers he gained in the morning after taking over Li Feiyu’s account.

“Xiao Lu, change your broadcasting name first!”

Li Feiyu rubbed his hands and reminded him, “You must definitely choose an awesome username, one that’ll help you eclipse an entire stage!”

Lu Chen then laughed and used the keyboard to input his own name “Lu Chen”. A pop up immediately came out.

*Username unavailable!*

Lu Chen then keyed in “Xiao Lu”, but the result was still the same!

Li Feiyu smiled and said, “The good names have already been taken by other people. I initially wanted to register as Xiao Fei Ge but it was typed “Lu Fei”.

What surprised him was that the name was still available!

Without further ado, he pressed enter and successfully changed his username!